After the gunshot: Hospitalizations for firearm injuries prevalent among children

About 20 children per day in the United States are injured by firearms seriously enough to require hospitalization, and more than 6% of these children die from their injuries, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues published in the Jan. 27 online issue of Pediatrics.

John Leventhal, M.D., and his team studied children and adolescents younger than age 20 at the time of admission to the hospital in 2009. In that year, in the United States, 7,391 hospitalizations occurred in this age group because of firearm injuries, and 453 of those young patients died while in the hospital. Most of these hospitalizations resulted from assaults (4,559), but in children younger than age 10, 75% of the almost 400 hospitalizations were due to unintentional or accidental injuries.

Leventhal and his team found that the most common types of firearm injuries included open wounds (52%); fractures (50%); and internal injuries of the thorax, abdomen or pelvis (34%).

Traumatic brain injuries occurred most often in children younger than age 5. Children who survive firearm injuries often require extensive follow-up treatment once released from the hospital, including rehabilitation, home health care, hospital readmission from delayed effects of the injury, and mental health or social services.

"These data highlight the toll of gun-related injuries that extends beyond high-profile cases, and those children and adolescents who die before being hospitalized. Pediatricians and other health care providers can play an important role in preventing these injuries through counseling about firearm safety, including safe storage," said Leventhal, who points to the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations that the safest home for a child is a home without guns, and, if there is a gun in the home, that it must be stored unloaded and locked, with the ammunition locked separately.

Related Stories

There are approximately 7,500 child hospitalizations and 500 in-hospital deaths each year due to injuries sustained from guns. In an abstract presented Oct. 27 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference ...

Firearm-related injuries in children and adolescents are an important cause of preventable injury and mortality. Recent national shooting tragedies involving children have resulted in new efforts to study the problem and ...

A new Yale School of Medicine study shows that cases of serious physical abuse in children, such as head injuries, burns, and fractures, increased slightly by about 5% in the last 12 years. This is in sharp contrast to data ...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is renewing its call to reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents, including counseling parents about safe gun storage as well as supporting legislation ...

From 1999 to 2007, there were 185,950 emergency department (ED) visits in the U.S. for firearm injuries in children aged 0 to 19 years. A new abstract presented Monday, Oct. 17, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) ...

(HealthDay)—Time to toss out the teaspoon and tablespoon when it comes to sick kids: The best way to measure liquid medications for children is in metric milliliters, a leading group of U.S. pediatricians ...

A lower percentage of children are eating fast food on any given day and calories consumed by children from burger, pizza and chicken fast food restaurants also has dropped, according to an article published online by JAMA Pe ...

The medication glyburide, which has been increasingly used to treat gestational diabetes in pregnant women, was associated with higher risk for newborns to be admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, have respiratory distress, ...

An intervention to teach mothers of preterm infants how to interact with their babies more effectively results in better weight gain and growth for the infants, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes ...

Parents of obese children may not be able to recognise that their child is overweight unless they are at very extreme levels of obesity, according to research led by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and UCL Institute ...

User comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.